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Created May 03, 2014 01:46PM PST • Edited Jun 16, 2021 06:50PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Locke is an extremely understated title for a totally gripping movie about an extremely understated guy. Ivan Locke spends the whole movie driving away from home and from his life. iDrive Away or Distracted Driving or iPhone Home would give a better sense of the tightly-wound existential journey it portrays.

   Tom Hardy is the only person to appear in Locke, though everyone important in Locke’s successful adult life speaks to him – and us – on his BMW’s speakerphone during Steven Knight’s 85 minute film. The Bimmer is almost as much the star of Locke as is the estimable Hardy, its iDrive his means of connection.

   The X5 looks contemporary but the phones are pre-iPhone, pre-Blackberry even, perhaps the only chink in Knight’s authorial armor. Thus Hardy, er, Locke, must manage several major crises the old fashioned way, by talking. In a tightly modulated performance, he does, never overplaying a scene, even though the camera is tight on him in the right-side driver seat for the nearly realtime runtime. High Noon on the M1, as it were.

   Ivan Locke is a successful manager, father and husband, making him like so many high achievers around London, Chicago or any other commercial capital. Locke nails all the quotidian details about this straight-laced man in his high tech performance vehicle, revealing his demanding job, underperforming subordinates, expectant family and secret burdens. To wit: He presses his forefingers into his neck beside his Adam’s apple to relieve inflammation during his tense 85 minute drive. Who hasn’t done that?

   Let’s conclude this summary with a mild warning, followed by a very strong endorsement. Here goes: Locke unspools a maritally uncomfortable story, making it easier to enjoy solo. Brilliant as it is buttoned-down, it most importantly serves as Tom Hardy’s latest entry on his inscription for the Acting Pantheon.

   One final warning: Can’t imagine liking a movie where Tom Hardy merely drives and talks? Avoid Locke.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Tom Hardy, let me count the ways you are a great actor. Ivan Locke is a character who we see reason with all the important people in his life, and rage at the dead Father who grievously let him down. Hardy makes these conversations and soliloquies deeply engaging, while never physically interacting with another person or leaving the driver’s seat of his X5. The diatribes directed at his deceased Dad are particularly compelling, damn near Shakespearean declamations in the most modern of settings.

   My only concern with his performance is what sounds to my American ear like a variable accent. I’d read that it is a Welsh accent. Perhaps, though it seemed different depending on who he was speaking with. Then again, many of us adopt differing tones when speaking with colleagues vs. children vs. spouses vs. dead forebears, so perhaps Hardy’s variable accent is just another measure of his acting greatness.

   Disembodied Voices

   • Olivia Colman as a woman he refuses to abandon
   • Ruth Wilson as his bitterly unreasonable wife
   • Andrew Scott and Ben Daniels as his shaky subordinates
   • Tom Holland and Bill Milner as his young sons
   • Danny Webb as a flaky local politician

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    The electronically mediated connections that modern cars provide are begging for transcendent literary treatment. Locke goes a long way towards seizing this opportunity, though limits itself primarily to the disembodied car-phone experience and the evanescent threats encountered in suburban commutes.

    Steven Knight’s brilliantly self-contained film is perhaps best appreciated as a meditation on the modern technocrat, a dispassionate problem-solver whose carefully crafted world proves to be less than secure.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    From his rubber cause-bracelet to his well stocked commuting vehicle, attention to detail defines Locke the character and Locke the movie.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.3

    Salty language is the extent of Locke’s explicit edginess. However, the picture it paints of a marriage fracturing is deeply dramatic.

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Salty 2.0

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    Steven Knight chose to make Ivan Locke a construction manager, making his film a brief course in the fine points of concrete pouring and skyscraper erection. This proves to be both engaging and sufficiently transferrable that Locke can be seen as the type of hyper-organized, detail-oriented guy that many of us recognize from our own careers.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0